I work in a medium-sized IT company in Central Europe. You what IT is like: you are allowed to bring your dogs to the office, wear funny tshirts, take long breaks and play Playstation - that's why I chose this field. Our company likes to maintain this "cool IT company image", flat structure, one of our engineers dyes his beard, another walks barefoot in the office. In our internal Slack there are channels that look more like 4chan - there are jokes about everything - from religion through pope to Holocaust. Not strict at all, right?
I don't work as an engineer - we are a "support unit" - Design, HR, Marketing, Administration, you name it (no contact with the clients). Recently I had a talk with my boss, who came to me, saying that people (and by people I mean technical managers) complain about me being chaotic. My performance and metrics are great, but there are comunication issues. We would go through case after case and I would have good arguments for each of them: with some of the "fuckups" I had nothing to do, they weren't mine. Some of them are an outcome of poor resources (like, you can't organize a great event with a very tiny budget and bad venue). Some of them were an effect of lack of procedures in the company.
In the end, when I answered all her accusations with logical arguments, she said "It doesn't really matter if it's your fault or not. What matters is your image, that makes people think it is your fault. You behave in a way people see as chaotic and they transfer it to your work".
And then it clicked. You see, I try to keep my sanity by having a colorful life. Sometimes I wear colorful, bright, flowery dresses. Sometimes I wear tshirts with My Little Pony, when I feel like this. Or glittery ballerinas or red heels. Sometimes I play rugby or RPG or do LARPs. Or I do art. Or I use a notebook with a unicorn on the cover. And I'm not shy about it - people in the company know it, I don't hide what I do after work, they see how I dress. (Remember, oficially we have no dress code). Oh, and I like to shorten the distance with humor (my humor is never hurtful or NSFW). Several weeks ago I was asked not to get involved into hyde park Slack discussions at work, because it affects my image (my boss words).
So to sum it up, my performance is good, but men of IT don't like my image so much, that they would blame me for everything that goes wrong in my area. Because while boys can be nerds and wear bronies t-shirts, and make jokes about minorities and be bold and interesting and have adventures and paint nails, girls should be quiet, shy, and surely not (god forbid) funny. If they are, they are unprofessional. All those things don't affect proffessionalism when it comes to men.
After this talk I had, I feel terrible. It was pretty humiliating as the general summary was "change your looks and personality". Maybe it's time to talk about double standards in IT. Have you ever encountered something similar? What did you do, fight or quit? Comply or rebel? Say things out loud or just swallow it because you can't one-handedly change the whole organization? [I was told I'm gonna get fired if I don't change my ways within 3 weeks...]
Here is a read about why women can't be funny: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/reasons-women-arent-funny
And another one about why long hair are unprofessional: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/long-hair_b_1710646
And one about how afros are unprofessional: https://www.essence.com/hair/black-women-natural-hair-discrimination-workplace/
And one about why girly clothes are unacceptable in general (watch out, this is from 6 years ago and it's really not ironic): https://corporette.com/when-do-girly-clothes-become-unprofessional/
Oh and this one about how feminine looks affect the perception of female academics:https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/oct/26/-sp-female-academics-dont-power-dress-forget-heels-and-no-flowing-hair-allowed
And one summing all this shitshow up: https://femmagazine.com/the-inherent-sexism-in-womens-professional-clothing/
Submitted June 08, 2019 at 01:55PM by yndraile http://bit.ly/2EVkDZu
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